This invention relates to apparatus for facilitating reading, and more particularly to apparatus for both illuminating and magnifying written material.
People with impaired eyesight may have difficulty in reading the text of many printed pages. When readers develop cataracts, the room lighting needed to illuminate the page may direct enough scattered light to the eye to obscure the page image. Magnifying lenses that incorporate a light source are well known in the art, as exemplified by U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,859,032 and 5,168,405 issued to Feinbloom; and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,132,849 and 5,021,933 issued to Cordes. They employ lenses with magnifying elements that are sections of a sphere. Such lenses magnify a circular area beneath the lens. When reading a page of text, the lens will only illuminate and magnify a small portion of the line being read. The user must continuously move the lens from left to right to read the entire line. This is a slow and awkward process. That may account for the poor reception of such devices by the public.
It would be useful to have a hand held device that would illuminate the page without throwing extraneous light to the readers eyes and that would magnify an entire line of type at one time. It would be convenient to have a device that illuminates and magnifies only a limited area for reading so as to not disturb a partner while reading in bed.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide a hand held device that will illuminate and magnify an entire line of type on a page at one time without directing extraneous light to the eyes of the user or to others, or illuminating areas needlessly. It is another object to provide the convenience of an illumination source that conserves power by lighting only the material being viewed. The device of the invention comprises an elongate cylindrical or half-cylindrical lens that is long enough to extend across a printed page to magnify at least one line of type together with a source of illumination that directs light upon the magnified area. Although the magnification is not uniform, being in only one dimension, the enlargement does enhance readability.
These and other objects, features, and advantages of the invention will become more apparent when the detailed description is studied in conjunction with the drawings in which like elements are designated by like reference characters in the various drawing figures.